Glyphs are the individual bricks, and 'words' the mortar that
holds them together. I must disagree that the line is the
smallest unit, when obviously the glyph is the smallest unit. No
two lines are identical, and only a handful of 'words' are
repetitive. The glyph is the unit to be concerned with, the brick
that needs to be identified, the smallest unit of information
transmission.

The line is the smallest unit of unambiguous agreement, not the smallest
unit of meaning. Any of us could point to probably hundreds of cases where
the case for and against a "word" division could be debated endlessly. And
should a double-space between words be encoded the same as a single space?
And so on.

Surely the process here is of agreeing a container within which our diverse
ideas and opinions can be held and compared against each other?